Mozambique: Police arrest man in possession of counterfeit notes in Beira
BBC (File photo) / Josina Machel
The man who mutilated Josina Machel, the daughter of Mozambique’s first President Samora Machel, and of former education minister, Graca Machel, did not show up for his trial on assault charges at a Maputo Urban District court on Friday.
Josina Machel suffered the assault in October 2015, when her boyfriend brutally attacked her, blinding her in one eye.
Since then the Machel family has been fighting to bring the case to court. Although Graca Machel is one of the best known public figures in Mozambique, defence lawyers have used a series of delaying tactics to keep the former boyfriend out of the dock.
On Friday it seemed that justice would finally be done for Josina. A sizeable crowd of friends and supporters of the Machel family turned up at the district court. But half an hour later they were told that there would be no trial because the assailant had simply not appeared.
According to Josina’s lawyer, Abdul Carimo, the defence had asked for the trial to be postponed on 8 December. The judge refused the request – but the ex-boyfriend defied the court, and travelled to South Africa on 13 December.
The defence showed the court documents, including a copy of the assailant’s passport, proving that he had indeed travelled. “Faced with these documents, the judge had no alternative but to postpone the trial”, said Carimo.
Angered at this delay, Graca Machel asked “Are we going to accept this? Is there nothing that can be done?”
Carimo said that, since the assailant will return to Mozambique on 30 December, he asked the judge to fix the trial for 3 January. Astonishingly, the defence lawyers said that was no good, because their client would be out of the country again, for the New Year holiday, and would only be back in Maputo on 13 January.
The judge accepted this too, and fixed 16 January as the trial date. Carimo said that, if the defendant once again fails to appear, he will request that the judge issues a warrant for his arrest.
Carimo noted that Mozambican women had struggled successfully for the country’s parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, to pass a law on domestic violence. “The law exists, and it is supposed to ensure that these cases are dealt with speedily”, he said, “but we have been waiting for more than a year”.
Carimo added that the defence has resorted to all the delaying tactics that the law permits. It has succeeded because the legal code governing these procedures dates from 1929, and has not yet been overhauled.
Leave a Reply
Be the First to Comment!
You must be logged in to post a comment.
You must be logged in to post a comment.